FYI, musket fires at exactly the same rate as bow long draw, before adding in critical reloads (the bonus for landing consecutive headshots). If you work at it, you can get 2 extra shots every siix seconds (free reload on dodge and a critical reload)
You can test it yourself. Count the number of long draws you can get off in 30 seconds then do the same with musket standard shots (without using shooter stance and critical reload). You might vary by 1 shot over 30 seconds.
With powder burn and stopping power up, you can do more damage than bow for several shots at a time.
Bow has a big opening shot due to a passive but drops by 15% on subsequent shots. Musket has a smallish opening shot, but you have several empowers which stack on subsequent shots and remain uo for extended duration.
Powder burn +12% damage for 9 seconds.
Stopping power +10% for 10 seconds.
Headshot +10% for 5 seconds.
Slowed or debuffed target … 10% empower for 5 seconds.
For musket your opening shot might be about 4.5k deoending on mob, your second shot is 5k and by the third you will be doing 6k-7k per shot for several shots, then you have to renew your empowers or your damage drops back to 4.5k or so. Not counting the burniing DOT from powder burn. Its possible to keep powder burn up near full time, but stopping power has a longer cooldown.
With bow, your opening shot might be 5.5k to 6k but subsequent shots will be steady 5k per long draw. You dont get the same extended empowers with bow that you do with musket.
Then you can have a weapon with keenly empowered and an amulet with empowered perk, which makes a huge difference (extends empower duration by 30%, applies to empowered headshot and other short duration empowers as well).
Depending on mob type and conditions, its not unusual to achieve 9k to 10k headshots. Not even talking about chardis dps phase. Thats like 35k to 40k per headshot in shooter stance with ancient bane, and some combination of vorpal,
Vicious and empowered shooter stance.
All i am saying is that the sustained damage of musket properly played is seriously underestimated. In the right scenarios and on the right encounters its a monster for sustained single target damage.
On the other hand, Its not nearly as easy as melee, and you can miss a critical headshot, and there are some encounters where there is a lot of boss movement or animation, which can make things hard. You just have to choose your battles. And ofc you have to avoid paranoia burst, dodge boss mechanics and continually reposition to get a good angle for headshots if the boss moves.
But thats why you have a second weapon.
Edit: its precisely the ‘empowered’ mechanics that dont work in pvp because landing multiple successive shots on the same target is a pipe dream. But then, for pvp i spec differently. I would go with Power Shot and Onyx gem for the big opener, and alternate it with powder burn. Power Shot also has an ‘empower’ mechanic though, 10% damage bonus for several seconds. But good luck landing several shots in a row.